Three patient stories illuminate the “malignant golem” of leukemia.
“People are both terrified and fascinated by leukemia in all its forms,” writes Sekeres, the director of the Leukemia Program at the celebrated Cleveland Clinic. “It is a monster…that grows out of control and invades the organs within our own bodies. It is metastatic at its genesis.” The events described are real, but the accounts are composites drawn from the author’s patients. Joan is a 48-year-old surgical nurse; David, a 68-year-old retired factory worker; Sarah, a 36-year-old pregnant woman. Each has a different type of leukemia, but their symptoms all reflect the uncontrolled growth of cells in bone marrow, which contains the cells that give rise to the red blood cells that carry oxygen, the white blood cells that are part of our immune system, and the platelets that aid in blood clotting. When the white cell progenitors become cancerous, they proliferate rapidly, crowding out red blood cells and platelets. However, the white cells do not mature, remaining functionless. Consequently, leukemia patients become anemic from lacking red blood cells, risk internal bleeding from loss of platelets, and suffer from a weakened immune system, making them prone to infection. Standard chemo treatment to kill the cancerous cells comes with side effects such as hair loss, skin rashes, nausea, and vomiting. What makes this narrative so compelling is the author’s ability to bring readers with him on his rounds as he meets each patient and family member, discusses treatment options, and follows them through weeks of treatment, reviewing lab results and bone marrow biopsies, and, when necessary, discussing next steps such as bone marrow transplants. These plot points, in addition to an epilogue, allow Sekeres to review leukemia research, including immunotherapy and the potential for more personalized therapies targeting specific genetic abnormalities. Nevertheless, leukemias remain among the most complex and difficult-to-resolve cancers, with no obvious causes and often brutalizing treatments.
That three patient narratives should prove so effective a lesson is a tribute to Sekeres as both storyteller and physician.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-262-04372-4
Page Count: 328
Publisher: MIT Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
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Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.
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More life reflections from the bestselling author on themes of societal captivity and the catharsis of personal freedom.
In her third book, Doyle (Love Warrior, 2016, etc.) begins with a life-changing event. “Four years ago,” she writes, “married to the father of my three children, I fell in love with a woman.” That woman, Abby Wambach, would become her wife. Emblematically arranged into three sections—“Caged,” “Keys,” “Freedom”—the narrative offers, among other elements, vignettes about the soulful author’s girlhood, when she was bulimic and felt like a zoo animal, a “caged girl made for wide-open skies.” She followed the path that seemed right and appropriate based on her Catholic upbringing and adolescent conditioning. After a downward spiral into “drinking, drugging, and purging,” Doyle found sobriety and the authentic self she’d been suppressing. Still, there was trouble: Straining an already troubled marriage was her husband’s infidelity, which eventually led to life-altering choices and the discovery of a love she’d never experienced before. Throughout the book, Doyle remains open and candid, whether she’s admitting to rigging a high school homecoming court election or denouncing the doting perfectionism of “cream cheese parenting,” which is about “giving your children the best of everything.” The author’s fears and concerns are often mirrored by real-world issues: gender roles and bias, white privilege, racism, and religion-fueled homophobia and hypocrisy. Some stories merely skim the surface of larger issues, but Doyle revisits them in later sections and digs deeper, using friends and familial references to personify their impact on her life, both past and present. Shorter pieces, some only a page in length, manage to effectively translate an emotional gut punch, as when Doyle’s therapist called her blooming extramarital lesbian love a “dangerous distraction.” Ultimately, the narrative is an in-depth look at a courageous woman eager to share the wealth of her experiences by embracing vulnerability and reclaiming her inner strength and resiliency.
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.Pub Date: March 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0125-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | SELF-HELP
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PROFILES
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION | PSYCHOLOGY | HISTORICAL & MILITARY
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